The Other Son
by maembe13
Summary: One shot. All Human-real world. Non-Canon. Emmanuel Loki and Thornton Odinson come from vastly different worlds and yet they find themselves living as brothers. How will Loki adjust to Thor's world-a world that does not accept him? How will Loki ever be able to return to his own?


_Author's Note: A while ago, I rewatched Thor/TDW and started pondering what the characters would look like in a "real world" setting. I especially wanted to explore the social identity formation of Loki and his process of racialization vis-a-vis his adoptive family. This is not even close to canon. I'm taking themes and relationships from the movie-verse and attempting to an experiment in cultural translation._

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**The Other Son**

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Loki can always remember the first time he saw Thor-the gangly boy with a spotted, sun-burned nose and hair as pale and fine as maize silk. The boy's eyes shown with a deeper blue than the sky above them, a color Loki never knew eyes could be. Thor's face broke into a gapped-tooth grin and he stuck out his hand in a boisterous greeting that broke through the shyness and uncertainty Loki felt.

"I'm Thornton, but everybody calls me Thor cause it sounds cooler," he said.

"My name is Loki Emmanuel. You can call me Loki or Emma."

"You're not a girl so I'll call you Loki," Thor said with finality.

Loki's dark eyes stared at Thor in slight confusion but he remained silent.

"Wanna play?" Thor said as he knocked a football with his foot into the air. The boys spent the remainder of the afternoon chasing the football across the grassy pitch in front of the primary school. Thor insisted on calling it "soccer" and Loki told him he was using the wrong word and Thor told him otherwise. They solved their argument by chasing each other through the field until they both tumbled on the ground in a jumbled heap of scraggly limbs and red earth and torn trousers.

Loki received a thorough caning that night from his grandmother for tearing his best trousers. Loki suspects Thor only received a pat on the head, chocolate, and a hot bath in consequence for his destroyed garment.

He can even hear the way Mrs. Odinson probably praised him over dinner, "Thor, you played so well with that poor little boy. You made his day. You did such a good job at making him feel important."

The rest didn't need to be said. _He's our sponsor kid, you know. You remember seeing his photograph on our refrigerator? He comes from a very poor family and so we help send him to school so that he can have a better life. _

And Thor would have smiled, not listened to a word, and returned to playing with whatever kid he could find after dinner. He wouldn't care. He was never particular in his friends, as long as they would play and as long as they would love him (as they must), he welcomed them all the same way. To him, they were all the same-even when they weren't.

After decades, Loki still fails to get Thor to recognize him as something else, something other, something distinct…something separate from Thor himself. But Thor never notices. He simply guffaws, pulls Loki in for a sweaty hug, and asks if he wants to shoot some hoops.

But Loki is not Thor. He can never be Thor, no matter how he has tried. Yet he still tries.

He loved Thor. Who didn't? The man could befriend a rock with his brilliant smile and glittering blue eyes. His presence filled a room. He was always the same-in any country, in any situation, Thor remained untouched by his surroundings, insisting the world around him bend to his amiable wishes. And the world around him happily bent, like a sapling in the wind, out of devotion to the golden son.

Thor could traverse Kampala in torn jeans and a dirty face, and be welcomed even by MP's and reverend fathers with outstretched arms, praise, and a cold soda. Loki, on the other hand, would be told to change his clothes, wash his face, and then he would be allowed the privilege of sweeping their compound or fetching their ironing.

Thor could bluster his way through their high school halls, reeking of sweat and covered in mud from football practice and still the eyes of the girls would worship him and he could pretend not to notice. Loki could meticulously dress himself in expensive clothes and still be despised for being that "poor African kid."

Thor and Loki, they became brothers, but they would never be the same.

The Odinson's family visited him twice during their world travels. Dr. Odinson felt Thor would benefit from more exposure to "the rest of the world" so spent summer breaks dragging the family through Brazilian jungles and Parisian cathedrals and building wells in rural Uganda. Mrs. Odinson tolerated her husband's fancies admirably and packed suitcases full of sunscreen, bug spray, and gallons of hand sanitizer.

She wept the first time she met an orphan and wished she could bring them all home with her. Loki felt the sentiment somehow diminished in value when he realized she spoke the same way of lost kittens.

She consistently wrote him letters telling him in detail about things that he didn't understand the importance of-the weather, her most recent bird sighting, Thor's birthdays. He still he appreciated the thought behind, even if the content baffled him. He especially appreciated it when she sent him good quality socks and pencils, and every now and then, a new football, which he prized almost as much as the socks.

Every now and then, Thor scribbled a hasty picture of a wrestler or an NBA star to send along to him, but Dr. Odinson's presence could only be felt in the checks mailed to his sponsorship program each month that ensured his school fees were paid, his daily lunches provided for, and his new uniform ready for him at the beginning of each new year.

It never really changed. To Mrs. Odinson, he would always be her "other dear son" who she valued almost as much as the family dog. To Dr. Odinson, he would always be another charity case, a duty he must fulfill to prove his own goodness and because it was "his duty to give generously out of the abundance he had received." Somehow, the cost of one family meal at a fast food restaurant could be spared in order to fix world poverty and ease his guilt over his affluence. The "little good" he could do that would never really change the order of things, but would make him feel like he had done enough. He would never really need to change things or come anywhere near the taste of true sacrifice.

Loki was not born poor, at least not by the standards of Ugandans (though he had a feeling his sponsor family would consider anyone born in Uganda poor, regardless of actual yearly income). His biological father, a government official in Kampala, made good money. His earliest memories hinted at a clean, well-polished compound with full bellies, plenty of smart, new clothes, and a shiny car that was the envy of the neighborhood. He and his brothers attended the best schools. Their house help took care of most of the chores of the house so that his mother's only tasks involved telling others what to do, arranging the clothes of her children, arranging the affairs of the extended family, and singing in the church choir.

He could remember precious little of his father now save the smell of freshly laundered suits and shoe polish, the shiny red package of biscuits he would bring for his children, and the way his mother cried when his casket was transported to their church for the viewing.

The medical bills from his father's illness took first the car and then the house. The loss of their father's salary sent his two older brothers and their school fees to their more affluent uncle's home. Loki found himself sleeping on a couch in his mother's brother's garage while she struggled to find a job with her class eight education.

He could still feel the way her hands morphed from soft and gentle to hard and calloused as she sought odd jobs from former friends, neighbors, and connections. Her nights grew later and later even as their meals shrank.

But she could still sing Luganda hymns with a joy that reminded him of the voice of an angel and he wished forever after that he could have somehow recorded that most beautiful of all sounds. He still could remember the feel of her arms around him as he sat upon her warm, full lap. And the taste of the matooke and g'nut sauce as only she could make it. Or how her rich, brown eyes and long nights of work told him of her love more than her quiet, reticent words ever would.

_You are worth it all. You are precious. You belong. _Her actions told him.

But a drunk driver on a late night stole all that from him and he found himself once again in a church with a casket, surrounded by the well-wishes of his large, extended family who all came to share in his grief. Their tears intermingled in that one moment and then life continued onwards, as stubborn and ceaseless as the Nile's torrents.

"I cannot take another," his uncle's wife said in her loud, forceful way. The words were spoken with the assumption their small nephew could not overhear, but in the thin walls of their suburban home and his sleepless grief, Loki heard.

His brothers had poured out their own grief in tandem with his, but in their place with their uncle, they had not known hunger or lack or the security only his mother's arms could bring. They did not struggle for their school fees or to find money for books. They always had sugar for their chai and jelly for their bread and they knew how to play video games and rode bicycles to town just because they could.

But the wealth of his uncle was already sapped by too many needy relatives and his wife said enough was enough. After a mere fortnight, Loki found himself shipped to his father's village to a previously unknown grandmother.

His jaja met him at the side of a dirt road wearing a faded blue and purple gomesi with a gold sash. She didn't smile, but her rough hands took his and she silently took him to her brick and mabati house.

She set him to work at once. He fed the goats, slashed the relentless forest overgrowth from creeping into their fields, and fetched water from the spring each morning. The sun rose and set. His trousers grew threadbare and hung high around his lengthened ankles. But he never went hungry.

He learned to love the wrinkled, grey jaja who carried herself with the pride of a queen, even as her tasks were as mundane as peeling matooke or washing the utensils. Her hands spoke what her lips kept hidden.

They never spoke once of his father or mother. They never spoke of him returning to school. He never asked the whereabouts of his brothers.

She did speak of other things and he basked in her eloquent Luganda stories.

She told of gods and kings and wars and warriors. She told stories of Mukasa and the Nalubaale, of Kabaka Mutesa and the first Martyrs, of clans and powers and spirits and tribes. She spoke of what it meant to be descended from royalty, to be a Muganda, a member of the proud, ancient kingdom of Buganda. She taught him their songs, their proverbs, their dances, their history. In their shared mother tongue she spoke with an eloquence that all his years of English could never translate and still maintain the intrinsic beauty.

In their village, he never grew lonely. Other children were as abundant as jackfruit and their home never lacked visitors. He found his own parents substituted with a dozen others who called him theirs…and used their own hands to curb his mischief when he overstepped his bounds.

The rainy season is followed by the dry and even the sweetest yellow mango cannot remain on the tree forever. Another casket in a church a mere three rainy seasons later and Loki found himself, once again, floating through his extended family, wondering which home he could curl into next.

His mother's family took their turn with him. His mother's sister took him into their home in urban Kampala. The towering skyscrapers, honking taxis, swirling dust, and never-ending chaos of urban life proved a vastly different world from the quiet simplicity of the village.

His aunty set him to work tending her three small children, cooking, cleaning, and running errands. His jaja, nearly blind and deaf, remained his sole companion during the day while the other children, the "real" children, went to school and left him at home to keep house.

Each night, after the dishes were washed and the children bathed and bedded, he hid himself away in a corner. By the dim light of the TV screen, he poured over their school work, reading their books, and drinking in whatever knowledge he could glean.

His uncle found him one day and berated his wife for keeping him home.

"Eh? What is this? The boy wishes to go to school. Why is he haunting our compound instead of developing his brain? You send him to school. You never know what he could become. He may be a good investment," his uncle said.

His aunty made some excuses involving words like "expense" and "what of our children" and "the business" and so on. His uncle shushed her and returned the next day speaking with the finality of a king as he threw out words like "organizations" and "sponsors" and "nearly free." The next thing Loki knew, he found himself in a freshly ironed green uniform, an empty exercise book and new pencil in hand, and a seat at the local primary school.

His freshly shaved head stood a head taller than his classmates, but his heart felt so overwhelmed with joy he couldn't care. His uncle's mysterious acquisition of his "birth certificate" swore he was the same age as his classmates. He wondered who his uncle bribed to receive said paper. It didn't matter. He had never known his age. It had never been important before and now, even if it labeled him as younger, he could do what he longed for and study.

So he studied. Day and night, he inhaled knowledge in whatever channels he could find it, studying late into the night, and quickly becoming the top of his class and every class after that, despite the mountain of housework his aunt still insisted he complete upon returning home each day.

He passed his class eight exams with such distinction, he was received into one of the best secondary schools in Kampala.

Three years into his six years of secondary school, he received "the letter".

The letter that changed his life forever.

The one that he still isn't sure whether he should have burned it without opening it or framed it for his posterity.

"_My dear son, we have found a way for you to join our family for a year and study at Thor's high school as an exchange student. How would you like that?"_ Mrs. Odinson wrote.

Of course, his aunt and uncle would approve. America was the land flowing with milk and honey, where money grew on trees and where only the brightest and the best of Uganda would be allowed entry, or so they all said. All he had to do was get in and his future, and the future of their entire family, would be set forever. He would finally "add value" to his family.

Loki felt afraid and excited. He was curious and he wanted to see this new world. He watched as his small circle of a plane window exchanged the brilliant emerald green of his beloved Uganda for the dusty concrete brown of Los Angeles.

It smelled of dry cement and heat and car exhaust. A hazy brown glow seemed to perpetually hang on the horizon like a rain cloud and it was four months before he saw a drop of rain.

He proudly wore his brand new red "Uganda Cranes" jersey as the Odinson's came to fetch him from the airport and he gave them gifts of Ugandan tea and paper beads and "I love Uganda" stickers that his aunt had sent him with to thank his hosts.

"Don't shame us," his aunty spoke to him as she packed his few belongings. "You will obey and listen well and work hard. This is your chance to make something of yourself."

He thought he had already made something of himself, but he supposed he needed to do some more making and remaking.

His first night, they fed him bread with something yellow and slimy they called cheese on it. There was no sauce, no matooke, no chai. Mrs. Odinson gestured towards the room larger than his aunt's home which she called a kitchen and said he should "help himself to anything he wanted." And so he slept hungry that night…and the next few nights…until he finally grew brave enough to forage through the strange boxes and packages they called "food" (but which didn't look or smell like food).

His new family welcomed him with open arms and delighted to "show him America." He drank more soda in one week than the last three years combined. They showed him the wonders they called microwaves (his aunt had one so it didn't seem so amazing) and washing machines (his aunt had one of those too…but their neighbor proved cheaper than the machine so she stored her cooking supplies in it). He didn't want to dampen their enthusiasm so he allowed a shy smile and feigned amazement.

He quickly learned how much he missed fresh pineapple, mangoes, passion fruit, jambula, and jackfruit.

They told him how lucky he was everywhere he went.

"How do you like America?" they would say and then wait to hear him speak words of praise and worship.

He grew well-practiced at feigning enthusiasm he didn't feel.

It's not that he didn't like his new home…it simply wasn't _his_ home. They could not understand how he could feel anything else. Indeed, it bordered on blasphemy to say it was anything but his heaven and salvation all rolled into one shrink wrapped package. So, he kept his conflicted and ambivalent emotions locked away within his breast and beneath his carefully constructed façade.

They wouldn't understand the weight of isolation he felt. He could wander the mudless, uncracked sidewalks for hours without passing another person. He could spend a day in complete silence. Where were the vendors? Where were the children playing football? Where were the mamas cooking fish? Where were the tatas drinking waragi and laughing?

He could almost feel the empty silence during the long, hot nights. There was no call to prayer, no family gatherings, no music from dance halls, no drums, no taxi horns, no laughter, no reminders of shared life. Constantly, he could hear machines-the hum of the freeway, the sirens from a firetruck, the automatic sprinklers, but the human beings hid themselves within their walled homes. They kept themselves barricaded from all community besides that which they chose to allow in and perfectly content in their isolation.

Their carefully crafted illusion of order and control made even death remain hidden from them. They did not understand the freedom of chaos, of a world where traffic "rules" would be abandoned with a whim, where someone could disappear in a village and truly disappear.

Here, he even had to ask permission to cross the street.

When he arrived, Mrs. Odinson took him to "his room," a room larger than any his cousins or his brothers shared, already set up with a desk and a light that never seemed to lack electricity. The giant closet hung full of Thor's old clothes that hung on him like a famine victim.

It wasn't that he was short. He just wasn't Thor. He was tall for his kind, the tallest in a tribe which seemed to average about 5'8" and he stood at nearly 5'11". But Thor would always dwarf him by at least half a foot.

"You are still growing," Mrs. Odinson said kindly when she saw him. "We'll shop for clothes that fit you well next week."

He wasn't growing. He knew it, but he simply smiled.

Mrs. Odinson told the school he was 17 since that's what his "birth certificate" said. If he sat down and really thought about it, as he did one day when he made a list of all the rainy seasons he'd seen, all the Independence Days, all the Martyr's Day celebrations, he figured he must actually be 19…maybe even 20. The school placed him in a class of 16 year olds (because he's African and from an African school, therefore he must be behind in his studies).

His new school glowed too clean and shiny. It was truly a wonder with its wealth of textbooks, computers, light bulbs, and working water pipes. Loki found himself immersed in a gaggle of mostly monolingual students, without uniforms, who had never really seen death or hunger or malaria or the way the sun sets in the banana leaves over Lake Victoria after a storm. It felt as alien as another planet-even more so than the home of the Odinsons.

Despite fluency in three languages, knowing how to do calculus by hand without a calculator, and his memorization of all the important historical events in Africa, Europe, and America in the last five hundred years, he found himself in an ESL class, remedial mathematics, and an intro to biology class.

It took three months of proof reading Thor's senior English essays and tutoring him in math and physics before Dr. Odinson noticed the improvement in Thor's grades and asked the source.

He immediately contacted the school and asked what on earth Loki was doing still in sophomore level classes.

"He's a foreign exchange student from a third world nation," the administrator told him. "We don't want him to get behind."

"Then why is he tutoring my son in his senior level classes?"

They "hmmed" and "hawed" and made some sort of noncommittal noises before giving Loki his first assessment exams.

He found himself moved up to 11th grade after that, with a new smattering of classes that he still found more similar to his class 8 work back in Uganda, but at least more advanced than the work he had been doing before.

In a world where each student had textbooks, calculators, the internet, and tutoring, why would anyone not pass well? Loki wondered. Even more, in a world where study guides and pre-test preparations were not considered cheating and where even the tests where multiple choice and true false, he found school despicably easy.

While he found his academics unchallenging, it was harder to convince his teachers that it was so. After being accused of cheating twice and receiving lower grades on essays simply for his "broken English" (i.e. British English…which still came out more correct than even Thor's best papers), he finally realized that he was wrong simply because he was him. They did not expect him to thrive and pass and know what he was doing, and therefore they would be watching for him to fail.

Because how could a "poor" kid from a "third world nation" possibly thrive without their help?

Yet he did. Academically, he could thrive.

Socially, he could not.

And he learned a new definition of poverty that had nothing to do with material possessions.

As long as he studied hard, performed well, and acted polite, Dr. Odinson tolerated his presence with a detached, unnoticing gaze. To Dr. Odinson, Loki remained a permanently temporary fixture in their household. Dr. Odinson provided him with food and a home and spending money and opportunity and so that was enough. Dr. Odinson's days were too full of other matters. Running a university and dealing with the politics of professors and students and boards and administrations took his mind away from such menial concerns as the emotional well-being of a foreign exchange student who should have all he needs simply by merit of his geographic placement in the land of the free and the brave.

He remained Mrs. Odinson's lost kitten, her "pet" that she paraded around her church group, had speak at ladies' meetings about "what poverty is like" and showed off as "her Ugandan son" and her "poor orphaned sponsor kid." The other women "oooed" and patted his head and sent him home with cookies and second hand clothes and unfulfilled promises of invitations to visit.

Thor was different. He never minded where Loki came from or who he was…which proved to be both a blessing and a curse. He saw Loki as a live-in playmate. Someone to play video games with, share jokes and sandwiches with, practice basketball with and find excuses to avoid homework with.

Sometimes Loki could fulfill his expectations. Other times he failed and Thor simply shrugged and found them something else to do…or went to go see a friend capable of performing properly.

They were inseparable as long as it was only the two of them. But when they went to school or to social events, Loki found himself once again alone.

He could not speak their language. In an avalanche of references to movies he had never seen, restaurants he had never tasted, and experiences he had never had, he found himself sidelined to the margins of Thor's well-meaning but small-minded group of friends. The greeted him with high fives, asked politely how he was, and never spoke to him again once they realized he could not recite the lines of the Princess Bride or Star Wars verbatim and he had no interest in who made it to the Super Bowl that year or which concert was playing that weekend.

They proved equally disinterested in his world. They could not name a president outside that of their own country…or three capital cities outside of their own….or even find his country on a map when pressed. (No, it is not in South America, he said, exasperated and gave up his feeble efforts to free them from their ignorance).

"Loki, why is Joey telling all his friends that you kept pet lions in your house?" Thor asked him one day.

"Because he asked me if I kept pet lions in my house and so I told him yes," Loki answered with a shrug.

"Why?"

"If he was fool enough to ask me such a ridiculous question, then let him believe the answer and look like a fool to his friends," Loki said with a slightly evil grin.

Thor gave a booming laugh.

"Also, I may have convinced a freshman that I'm actually a Nigerian prince here seeking asylum," Loki said. "I asked her if she would like to be one of my wives. She stopped speaking to me at that point."

Thor shrugged and pummeled Loki with a pillow, thus ending all attempts at conversation for the next hour until both boys and multiple pillows lay strewn across the carpet.

Sometimes, he found himself invisible.

They knew Idi Amin. They knew Joseph Kony. But like his "invisible children," Loki too, remained invisible, unseen by a world power who felt that to be in power meant to deny the existence of any other world outside their own.

"Uganda is The Pearl of Africa…the Source of the Nile…the Kingdom of Buganda….a beautiful place…a rich history..." he said, plaintively shouting to plugged ears. He could not shift the rigid ruts surrounding their preconceptions of the place he loved.

The place which they feared, which they did not know or understand or care to learn, which they saw as only the mirror through which to see their own superiority.

The clichéd last place on earth an American would willingly go to unless they wanted to earn the approval of their friends and elders for their piety and willingness to "suffer" and be "brave." He still struggled to understand what true bravery was required to go on safari, raft the Nile, and give cheap flip flops to a herd of "starving" children (who most likely preferred to walk without shoes).

To him, it seemed they only succeeded in obtaining an impressive Facebook profile photo of the "hardcore" pearly white American who had then proved their intrinsic goodness through having a photo taken amongst a herd of bedraggled little African children.

Because Americans were always in the center.

And he would always be on the periphery, one of those bedraggled little children who existed simply to frame and highlight the goodness of the "hardcore" family his life found itself orbiting.

He could not hold it against them. The Odinsons were good people and they loved him, but he never belonged in their world and they never truly understood his.

There was the day Mrs. Odinson took him to have his hair cut. They went to the same barber that cut Thor's wild blond tresses. The woman who had tended Thor since infancy looked at Loki and faked a smile. She snipped and shaved and combed and cut. Then told him he looked wonderful.

He wasn't brave enough to look until he got home. He cried into his pillow and wore a hat for a week.

It took six months before he could find a barber who knew what to do with his kind of hair.

Because he wasn't Thor.

Mrs. Odinson loved him. She made him banana bread for his Monday study sessions and brought him new polo shirts and fresh lemonade whenever she felt like he looked a little sad. She made sure he could call his aunty every second Saturday, though he often wished he didn't have to.

He ran out of excuses as to why he couldn't send his aunty another $500 or another IPAD or why he wouldn't be coming home in December.

"Did you have a nice talk with your aunty?" Mrs. Odinson asked every time he hung up.

"Yes, Mama," he would answer, and give her as convincing a smile as he could and pretend it didn't make him feel even more alone.

He made Mrs. Odinson cry once.

It was the day he asked her why another kid at school called him a "dirty nigger."

She looked at him, mouth agape, and her beautiful blue eyes filled with tears. She threw her arms around him and told him how precious he was to her and their family and how horrible that was.

"Some people are just ignorant and they don't know any better," she said. "This country has had a bad history with race, but we've moved past that. It's better now and it shouldn't be a problem anymore."

But she still didn't explain what the word meant. He had to turn to Google for that. Then he Googled "race in America." He found there were more words and worlds he needed to learn.

He couldn't bear to see her cry again. He didn't tell her about the next time he was called that…or the next…or the next. That way she could go on thinking it was only one crazy person, one isolated incident that could more easily be dismissed.

Instead of the permanent neon sign that seemed to flash into his consciousness. _We don't want you. We don't like you. You don't belong. _

"Don't let it get to you," Dr. Odinson told him after his wife related Loki's incident. "It could be worse. At least you aren't in Africa."

Loki's eyes narrowed and he inhaled through his nose as deeply as he could before he could recover his composure. He heard what Dr. Odinson said beneath his words. _It's better to be rejected in America than accepted in Uganda. _

They loved him and he loved them, but they didn't understand. They could not understand the way shame now flowed in his veins as surely as his Muganda blood or how he felt forced to sacrifice all his self-respect on the altar of his new home. He felt torn between loving his old home and his new…and it felt impossible to love both.

But it felt like blasphemy to his family to try to explain it…to them who had "rescued him" and "saved him" and "brought him to a better place" for a "better life."

The "better life" that required him to hate himself and lose himself and be swallowed by the shame of being something other than he ought.

Thor kept telling him not to let it get to him and let it roll off his back like a water off a duck.

Loki simply scowled in response and pushed him over. Cause Thor would know all about what it was like to be hated simply for the fault of being born in the wrong body and in the wrong place.

Thor could never understand.

Loki received a fat lip and was told to "go back to your malarial swamps" one day when he failed to join in the attempts of camaraderie of an African American student.

"Hey nigga," the student said to him.

Loki glared at him. "I'm not a nigger."

"Whoah, man, we the same. You and me, our people were all slaves."

"My people were not slaves, they were kings," Loki said, succinctly, and then he received the fate lip. He did not make any friends that day either and he didn't understand the animosity the student showed him.

Even the mighty kingdom of Buganda could not stand the relentless pressure of America and Loki found himself speaking of him home less and less.

It took six months before he finally placed his "Uganda Cranes" jersey in the back of his drawers and a year before he threw it out altogether.

His failed attempts to prove that he came from a beautiful, worthwhile place and that, by extension, being from that place did not exclude him from being beautiful and worthwhile, finally faded into the desire for adaptation and assimilation.

He tried. He really tried. He watched all the movies. He ate at all the restaurants. He bought the right clothes. He changed his accent, forcing his "r's" and flattening his vowels and he stopped speaking of where he was from, who he had been, the world he had known.

But they could still smell the rich red earth that pummeled through his veins and called him foreign.

"Where are you from? When are you going home?" they asked, reminding him he would never belong in this world. He would never find his way into the center and his disguise failed to hide the ugly secret of his true identity.

"I'm Jamaican," he said when he got to college. He immediately was embraced and thought to be "cool" (Bob Marley and weed for the win).

"I'm from London," he said when he graduated from college, twisting his accent again and speaking of his few memories from their last summer's trip. This helped him find jobs.

Thor could always find jobs. All he had to do was break into that smile that filled a room and he would be hired…despite dropping out of college…despite multiple arrests on his record for drunken rants and brawls…despite having no actual skills besides charisma and good looks and connections.

He was Thor and he never found himself without a good paying job, despite the number of jobs he lost or mismanaged or quit along the way.

But Loki could not find work, even at a fast food restaurant, until long after graduating college.

He tried. He did everything Dr. Odinson said. Everything Thor did. He followed all the rules. He filled out the applications, wore suits to interviews, said all the right things, and still he remained out of work….except when their sweet neighbor hired him to fix her shed or Mrs. Odinsons' tennis friend asked him to help her with some office paperwork for the business she ran out of their home. He should have figured out a long time earlier that he played by a different set of rules that Thor.

He never knew if his acceptance into college and the full ride scholarship were due to his skills and academics or Dr. Odinsons's position at the college and their need to fill a quota with any student they could find with dark skin, regardless of their background.

He preferred not to know the answer.

Finally, college degree in Engineering and minor in English in hand, he sat at another job interview, certain he could thrive in the position.

"This job is only for people with college degrees," the man in the suit said and sent him away.

Loki never told Dr. Odinson about that. The shame burned him all the way from the head to his toes and he decided it was time for another disguise.

He filled out his next round of applications with Odinson as a last name and left out any and all experiences that mentioned a life in Uganda.

He had three job offers within a month.

Though one was rescinded after they met him in person and saw that his face did not match the British accent with which he spoke.

There were some things about himself that he could never disguise.

He met a girl with pale blue eyes, light as the pale equatorial sky and hair the color of the red Ugandan earth. Her laugh at his stories filled his heart with more warmth than all the Californian summer heat could bake into him. And he dared to be himself for once-his real self.

Those beautiful months seemed so full. Full of karaoke at the pizza shop, late nights watching stars during illegal night hikes, and "study" dates in their college library preparing for their shared physics class.

She called him her Ugandan and she was his American.

Till he met the family.

Her mother greeted him at the door with a look of surprise. She quickly pulled her eyes tight into a poorly faked smile.

"I thought you said his was the son of Dr. Odinson?" the girl's mother asked in the privacy of the kitchen while he sat on the couch to "wait for refreshments".

"He is."

"That is not Thor."

"No, he's the other son."

She didn't need to say it. He was the wrong son. He was the one her daughter was not supposed to bring home, the one who should have remained shrouded in secrecy and names that were not his in order to be accepted.

It was the other son she wanted for her daughter.

He was a fool to be himself.

He decided he would not be such a fool again.

Loki's one year in high school in America turned into two and then he lost count of the years as college engulfed him with year after year of studies and degrees and aspirations.

Besides, what did he really have to return to?

He visited Uganda again, the summer he graduated from high school. (when did it become high school and not secondary school? When did football morph into soccer?)

He stepped off the plane into the scent of wet earth, charcoal fires, and fresh rain and he knew he was home. The bustle and color and noise of Kampala soothed his home sick heart.

That first morning, his jet lagged soul listened to the chorus of birds in the dusky pink dawn by Lake Victoria and he wept.

But for those two months he looked at his home and his home looked at him and they found themselves strangers to each other.

Even here, he found himself mocked for his accent (now "too American") and his clothes (too informal). His long absence distanced him from the friends and family who continued on with their lives without him. They were disconnected and out of joint and he found himself wondering where "home" truly lay for him now?

His face flamed in the heat of shame at the family dinner. His aunty, dressed in her best gomesi, knelt before him as if he were a big man and an elder now.

"Our other son has returned home to us," she said, her eyes glowing in pride.

They glowed in disappointment later. He could never bring enough, give enough, be enough to earn her lasting approval.

How could he explain how long it took him to save the money he came with? Or how he struggled to find work? They wouldn't understand. They couldn't.

He was a man between worlds now, changing his colors like a chameleon to blend in, he found himself untethered and without a home. He felt himself floating in the void between worlds, slipping between them but truly belonging to none.

He would forever remain the other son.

* * *

_More notes: Loki is not a Kiganda surname, however I wanted the character to be a Muganda. So, I cheated. It is an actual surname for the Karamajong, a tribe in eastern Uganda, but that's not the tribe I described here-not even close.__This remains as unresolved as the movie-verse version. While the MCU added the complicating component of racialization into the mythology and asked difficult questions, it also failed to answer those questions. We see Loki's struggle with his identity and corresponding internal battles, we also never see him resolved. In a sense, I think this lack of resolution only supports the Aesir "Frost Giant narrative" instead of rewriting it. Unfortunately, this is a lost opportunity...but one which leaves space for Fanfic authors to play in.:)_


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